Developer Tea

When you hit a career roadblock, the methods that worked for you before often stop working. Today, I’m diving into why that happens, and why the first and most critical step in progressing past stagnation isn't doubling down on skills, but clearly defining the problem standing in your way.Problem Definition As A Path for Career GrowthMy goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers. This episode is for everyone trying to grow, especially if you have hit some kind of roadblock. Most career progression, especially early on, happens somewhat automatically through natural experience, domain expertise, and skill accumulation,. However, as you progress, you will hit missing rungs or roadblocks—things preventing you from progressing in promotions, positions, or specific projects.When blocked, most people rely on the same things they did before, such as gaining experience, reading blogs, or building side projects, using a "scattershot approach" to try a

We often look for ways to reduce the load on our brains, seeking shortcuts and optimizations to get ahead. Sometimes this works, reinforcing the belief that we can hack our way around every problem. However, this episode addresses the truth that many fundamental aspects of your career require something difficult, messy, slow, or inefficient, demanding deep thought and repeated failure.This episode details the difficult truths about facing the most essential challenges in your career:Understand the Hard Path: Recognize that many aspects of your career, skill set, relationships, and hobbies require something difficult, messy, slow, or inefficient, demanding deep thought and repeated failure.Identify Your Primary Obstacles: Pinpoint the hard things you are procrastinating on, such as developing essential domain knowledge, deepening relationships with crucial co-workers or your manager, or getting the necessary "reps" of difficult building and practice.The Path to Mastery: Realize that becoming a great engineer (

If you're looking to accelerate your career growth, this episode gives you what may feel like hard truths about the path forward. So many engineers fall into traps of overthinking, chasing minor optimizations (like 5% or 10% productivity boosts), or playing the games of politics and networking. While these sideline activities aren't necessarily useless, I want to help you focus on the "big engines" and "primary considerations"—the things that will make the monumental difference in your career building strategy.• I explain why arguments based on nuance—such as trying to convince your manager that your work is valuable despite low throughput, or doing "glue work"—are often based on flawed strategies that cause your career to suffer and not grow easily.• I use an allegory (discussing the primary path of treatment for low testosterone) to illustrate that many engineers are trying to fix a fundamental, mainline career problem with a sideline, nuanced solution, instead of focusing on the gold standard primary path.

If you're an engineer looking to move into a senior role, you have likely heard that you need to demonstrate "ownership". Unfortunately, this crucial term is often poorly defined and leads to a major misconception: that ownership means being assigned a full project or a Tech Lead role. I want to dispel that myth and explain why ownership is actually a necessary behavior and mindset shift, applicable in almost every action you take, regardless of whether you’re leading a project.Understand why ownership is a critical aspect of moving along your career track, especially for engineers moving from the associate or mid-level engineer role up to senior.Uncover the misconception that ownership requires a specific scope of responsibility, such as owning a project or a deliverable.Discover the crucial phrase that defines the ownership mindset: "What now?" or "What next?" which should guide you through every situation you encounter.Learn why true ownership is not about inherently knowing every technical detail or execu

Hey everyone, welcome to today's episode of Developer Tea. This is the second part of my interview with Bryan McCann, the CTO at you.com. If you haven't listened to Part One, I'd encourage you to go back, as it provides crucial context for our continued discussion. In this episode, we dive into how you can think about relating to and integrating the massive changes that AI is bringing to your job, whether you are a software engineer, manager, director, or product professional. Bryan and I discuss his interests beyond research, including art and organizational design.Explore the two primary paths for developers in the long run: specializing as managers of AI tools (like a product manager with engineering insight) or striving to be better than AI at building better versions of AI itself (the "neurosurgeon" type).Understand why refining your intuitions about what should be built becomes increasingly crucial as automation makes execution easier.Examine how conceptual biases often become the bottleneck when intera

Hey everyone and welcome to today's episode of Developer Tea. It's been quite a while since I've had a guest on the show. Today, I'm joined by Bryan McCann, CTO at you.com. We dive into a wide-ranging discussion, exploring the philosophical origins of his career—from studying meaning and language to working in very early AI research. This discussion is less advice-heavy and more focused on kind of theory and discussion. I hope this is insightful for you and helpful as you crystallize your own philosophies on these subjects.Explore the philosophical journey that led Bryan McCann from being a philosophy major interested in meaning to pioneering early AI research. Bryan views his current work as an extension of those original philosophical questions.Discover how Bryan shifted from hitting a dead end in "armchair philosophy" to using computational tools to study language and try to make machines that could create meaning.Understand why Bryan believes that meaning, in the sense he originally sought it, is an innat

I'm tackling a massive challenge today: burnout. While the standard advice usually involves working less, I want to show you a practical dimension of burnout you have more control over, focusing on increasing your agency and autonomy to manage chronic workplace stress more effectively. Burnout is classified by the ICD-11 as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.This episode includes practical advice for understanding and addressing burnout by shifting focus from reducing work volume to increasing control and resources.Understand the three dimensions of burnout as classified by the ICD-11: feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance/negativity toward the job, and reduced professional efficacy.Discover why the amount of time you work is not a direct input to burnout, meaning working less is often impractical and may not solve the underlying issue.Learn the core philosophy for addressing burnout: In order to control stress, provide con

In this episode, I dive into the management mantra that "what is measured is managed" and explain why this simple assertion often leads to a complex trap. We discuss why the act of measuring team productivity is never neutral—it's an intervention that immediately changes behavior, often resulting in unintended consequences like gaming the metrics. We'll explore how to collaborate with your team to find measurements that truly drive desired behaviors.Understand why the phrase "what is measured is managed" means that measuring something triggers management of that thing, in varying degrees.Learn why the act of measuring something is an intervention, especially when done with the intent of turning it into a target (e.g., increasing PRs or decreasing bugs), and how this action is shown to change behaviors around the thing being measured.Discover how measurement can lead to unintended consequences, such as when tracking velocity via story points causes team members to inflate or deflate their estimates, making the

I want to dive into the concept of Deliberate Practice, which sets the greatest apart in fields ranging from sports to writing to engineering. I’ll explain why it’s much more than just repetition or experience, and why applying it to your career can lead to rapid improvement. Most importantly, I will provide concrete ways you can apply deliberate practice to level up your engineering and leadership skills, especially in areas that are traditionally difficult to practice, such as communication and strategic decision-making.Differentiate Practice from Deliberate Practice: Understand that while repetition is part of practice, deliberate practice specifically involves engaging in a very narrow set of activities with the intentional goal of improvement, requiring very quick feedback for continuous incorporation.Identify Opportunities for Rapid Improvement: Learn why deliberate practice is much more effective at achieving rapid improvement than simply engaging in repetition.Apply DP to Leadership Skills: Discover h

This episode explores the concept of Locus of Control and why developing a more internal locus of control is beneficial for your career and life. You'll learn the difference between internal and external perspectives, why one is more useful than the other, and practical exercises to shift your mindset to believe you have more influence over the outcomes you care about.Understand Locus of Control: Discover what psychologists mean by locus of control—whether you believe outcomes are determined by your own actions (internal) or by external forces like luck and chance (external).Adopt a More Useful Mindset: Learn why an internal locus of control, while not a perfect reflection of reality, is a more useful and effective mindset for your career, as it prevents you from missing opportunities to influence outcomes.Recognise Your Influence: Find encouragement in the idea that you almost certainly have more influence and control over situations in your life and career than you currently believe.Shift Your Perspective w

In this episode we'll discuss why "Résumé Driven Development" is a powerful mental model for building a thriving career. Instead of seeing your résumé as just a job-hunting tool, you'll learn to use it as a guide for setting measurable, impactful goals that benefit you, your manager, and your company.Focus on Impact, Not Just Tasks: Discover why a great résumé is built on proof of impact, not just a list of completed projects. The best way to improve your career is to focus on achieving measurable goals that demonstrate real value.Have the Goals Conversation: Learn how to initiate a critical conversation with your manager to define measurable goals for your role. If your manager can only provide project deadlines, take the initiative to propose your own impact-oriented goals.Connect Goals to Business Value: Understand the importance of linking your work to business metrics. While there's a risk that a project might not meet its business goals, you can also measure impact through clever technical solutions or

In this episode, we introduce a simple yet powerful mental model from the world of sports: forced vs. unforced errors. By understanding this concept, you can shift your focus from things outside your control to the simple, foundational behaviours that truly define a successful career.Understand the Difference: Learn the distinction between forced errors—mistakes caused by chance, situation, or randomness that are hard to prevent—and unforced errors, which are avoidable blunders resulting from a lack of attention or care.Focus on What You Control: Discover why the most successful engineers prioritise reducing their unforced errors. While most people worry about hard-to-predict "forced errors," top performers concentrate on the fundamentals they can directly influence.Identify Your Unforced Errors: Recognise common unforced errors in your career, such as not testing your work, being late for meetings, erratic communication, or posting unprofessional content online. These simple mistakes can significantly impact

In this episode, we introduce two fundamental thought experiments to help you uncover your true priorities and core values. By exploring scenarios of scarcity and abundance, you'll learn to align your daily actions with what truly matters, leading to a more satisfied career and life.Uncover Your Priorities: Engage in a "5% exercise" where you imagine only being able to complete a tiny fraction of your to-do list. This thought experiment leverages a scarcity mindset to reveal your genuine priorities, helping you distinguish between what you perceive as important and what truly is.Discover Your Values: Participate in an "abundance exercise" by imagining all your obligations are met and you have complete autonomy. What you choose to do next in this state reflects your core values and helps you move beyond aspirational or culturally normative answers.Go Deeper: Learn to challenge superficial answers when identifying your values, pushing beyond the obvious to find unique and potentially surprising insights that ge

This episode explains what is arguably the best career advice you'll hear this week: the one skill that signifies seniority in software engineers is the ability to synthesise and optimise for multiple factors at once. Instead of focusing on a single factor, such as performance or maintainability, senior engineers identify and weigh the various trade-offs involved in any decision.Discover the key skill that distinguishes a senior engineer: It's the ability to synthesise multiple, competing factors—like performance, maintainability, cost, and time to market—rather than focusing on just one.Learn why single-factor thinking can hold you back: Junior engineers often optimise for what they know best or what is easiest to measure, which can harm the overall solution, the team, and their professional reputation.Understand how to demonstrate seniority in interviews and at work: You can show your maturity and wisdom by identifying the crucial trade-offs for any given problem, asking what factors need to be balanced, an

This episode focuses on the critical importance of having a backup plan, not just for technical redundancies but especially for situations involving human error, which are highly prevalent in one's career. The core argument hinges on understanding risk and reward curves, highlighting the disproportionate impact of failures compared to incremental successes.Understanding Risk and Reward Curves:Successes are often incremental. Delivering a project on time typically leads to opportunities for more projects, good performance reviews, and modest pay increases (e.g., 5-7%). These are positive, but linear or slightly bumpy gains.Failures, especially uncaught ones, have a much longer negative tail. The potential for loss from a significant mistake or a disastrous project significantly outweighs the potential for gain from a success.A bad performance review, for example, can affect future reviews, decrease promotion likelihood, and follow you for a much longer period than a good one.Uncaught failures can place individ

Todays episode delves into understanding and leveraging second and third-order consequences – the ripple effects that occur after an initial action – and introduces forcing functions, which are an inverted way of thinking about these consequences, designed to drive desired outcomes by first determining "what must be true" for them to occur. The episode also connects these concepts to the importance of effective goal setting, explaining how well-defined goals provide clarity, focus, and a strategic framework for decision-making and career advancement.Grasp Second and Third-Order Consequences: Learn to identify the downstream effects of initial actions. For instance, setting a target for test coverage (first action) might lead to people adding tests that don't genuinely test anything but merely inflate the metric (second-order consequence), potentially resulting in disillusionment with testing or continued incidents despite high coverage (third-order consequence). Conversely, giving someone ownership or autonom

This episode delves into the philosophical concept of hyperobjects – problems so vast and complex they lack clear boundaries and cannot be "solved" once and for all. It explores why attempting to permanently fix issues like technical debt, user experience, or performance management is often ineffective. Instead, it offers a new perspective: how to interact with and manage these intractable problems by focusing on specific outcomes and accepting their ongoing nature.Understand hyperobjects as problems that extend beyond clear boundaries and time, such as technical debt or performance management, which cannot be truly "solved".Discover why a "one-time fix" approach is an anti-pattern for hyperobjects, as their dynamic nature means solutions must also be continuous.Learn to shift your mindset from "solving" to "interacting" with these large, persistent problems, focusing on managing their effects rather than trying to contain them.Explore the importance of focusing on specific, achievable outcomes and taking "sn

This episode delves into a powerful model for encouraging behaviour change, applicable to both managing others and self-improvement, by focusing on three critical factors: Trigger, Incentive, and Ability. It challenges common, ineffective management approaches and provides insights into fostering new habits and desired actions by making the 'right' thing the 'easy' thing.Uncover why naive management approaches, such as mandating rules or blaming individuals, are ineffective at solving underlying behavioural problems or creating new, lasting habits.Learn about the Trigger, Incentive, and Ability model, a set of principles that can be applied to encourage specific actions in others or to facilitate self-betterment and incorporate new behaviours into your own life.Understand that Incentives are the critical factor in deciding what actions to pursue, driven by the question, "what's in it for me?". It's crucial for incentives to be clear and understood; an unclear incentive is effectively no incentive at all. Bene

This episode delves into the crucial role of well-positioned goals in a developer's career. It asserts that goals provide clarity, perspective, and purpose, particularly focusing on clarity as a primary benefit. The discussion challenges common struggles with goal setting, including the often-overlooked importance of relevance (the 'R' in SMART goals), suggesting that an irrelevant goal, no matter how specific or measurable, is ultimately ineffective. The core message highlights that the purpose of a goal is to serve as a clarifying and prioritising tool, enabling you to make decisions about what to do and focus your efforts, rather than simply doing work that is handed to you. You will learn to start small and focus on desired outcomes or what you want to be true, accepting that a goal only needs to be "directionally correct" rather than perfect. The episode also provides a practical heuristic: to set goals by considering how your boss will evaluate your performance in the future. It emphasises the importanc

Today we explore Cognitive Load Theory. This concept can profoundly influence how you structure your workday, manage teams, and approach learning in your career. The episode highlights that much of professional work, particularly in knowledge-based roles like software engineering, is fundamentally about learning. You will discover that there is an optimal amount of information processing for effective learning, and both overloading and underloading your cognitive capacity can be detrimental. A key insight is that cognitive load does not discriminate; all external factors, whether work-related or personal (e.g., tiredness, a messy desk), consume your finite cognitive capacity, leaving less "headroom" for optimal performance. Furthermore, cognitive load is not static but varies daily, impacted by an individual's diverse life experiences. The episode also delves into how skill development effectively lowers the cognitive load required for specific tasks, allowing individuals to achieve more with less mental effo